There are now considerable data to show that college students and essential hypertensive patients can be instrumentally conditioned to lower their own blood pressure. These are intriguing data, but they do not tell us whether the newly acquired blood pressure level is controlled directly or indirectly through the use of mediating forms of behavior. The purpose of this proposal is to explore this aspect of the problem. By assembling data on this particular feature of the broader problem of visceral learning, some light may be shed on the neurophysiology of learning as well as perhaps setting the stage for a drug-free treatment precedure for essential hypertension. The first experiment in the series will be performed to determine some of the physiological correlates of conditioned blood pressure acquisition and extinction. Subsequent experiments in the series will be carried out to determine if and to what extent the blood pressure response and concomitent behaviors such as heart rate and respiration may be decoupled from sphygmomonometric measure of arterial blood pressure.